it was a mandate on health care and his handling of the economy. my guess is there were eye-rolling among republicans when he said what the election proved was that the american people favor his approach. i would also add very quickly, i think a lot of the deal-making here depends on how you definele balanced approach. i think john boehner and barack obama said this has to be a balanced approach. balance is in the eye of beholder in terms of how much of each part of it goes into the final deal. >> susan. >> you know, there's one way that president obama could deal with these questions about specificity, and that's to take some questions from reporters and answer them. this is really unusual for a president just re-elected to come out and talk to the reporters by reading a statement, being surrounded by supporters behind him, and not take questions from the press. you remember there were famous press conferences by president george w. bush when he was re-elected and bill clinton and ronald reagan when he was re-elected. the president can deal with t